Search This Blog

Subscribe to this blog

Follow by Email

The Inconsistent Aladdin Series

In 1994, Disney created an animated series of their 1992 masterpiece, Aladdin. The movie was an incredible work of art which recently joined the ever-expanding list of princess anniversaries in November to celebrate its 25th anniversary. Unfortunately, the television series fell rather flat in comparison to the film. Though it lasted a grueling 85 episodes, most of it has been forgotten by the general public with the exception of a small handful released alongside episodes of The Little Mermaid series on VHS featuring Princess Jasmine. I recently took the liberty of watching all 85 episodes to see if the show could withstand the test of time. My findings were not promising.

The Aladdin series was introduced with The Return of Jafar, Disney's first sequel, and one of the worst. It's no wonder, then, that the series sports the same cheap animation, flimsy storylines, and lack of character growth as its intro movie.Though it occasionally gave the characters new outfits (as pictured above), much of what happened in the original film remains stagnant. In the series, Aladdin is still poor and lives in an abandoned hovel despite getting engaged to the princess. I mean, seriously? He goes to the palace for meals and then walks back to his stone cold bed every night? Even the wanted thief Flynn Rider gets a nice room in the castle in the Tangled series, and he hasn't even gotten engaged to Rapunzel yet. So little changes in the series that if the much stronger sequel, Aladdin and the King of Thieves, in which Aladdin and Jasmine finally tie the knot, had taken place immediately after the original Aladdin movie, virtually nothing would have changed, with the exception of Iago becoming an ally.

Even though I realize Jasmine is not the main character, this is a princess blog, so I'd like to talk a little about her role in the show. As I stated earlier, the only episodes that were released on VHS were about Jasmine, and the tapes were clearly marketed for girls. I even remember a Jasmine charm necklace that I got from one of them as a kid. Most people who saw the show as children know that the Jasmine-themed episodes were the best ones. Some examples that come to mind are "Garden of Evil," in which Jasmine gets kidnapped by plant-like man who wants to make her part of his beautiful garden, "Elemental, My Dear Jasmine," in which Jasmine gets kidnapped by a jealous mermaid, and "Sandswitch," in which the jealous Sadira alters everyone's memories so she could take over Jasmine's life as the princess and Aladdin's fiancée. Some might argue that Jasmine suffers from "Damsel in Distress" syndrome from these examples, but the show was actually rather progressive in that respect, with Jasmine always insisting on joining the rest of the gang on dangerous quests in order to protect her kingdom. She absolutely refuses to be seen as a damsel in distress, no matter how many times she gets kidnapped.

Being that Jasmine is such a strong character and the show was marketed as part of what would later become their Disney Princess line, it's surprising that she was absent from so many episodes. The Arabian princess is missing from roughly a third of the series. Many of the episodes without her have no female characters in them whatsoever, which draws glaring attention to the fact that she is the only woman in the show's entire primary cast. This makes the majority of the series difficult for girls to enjoy or relate to. Yes, there are some great recurring female villains, like Sadira the sand witch (Sandwich. Get it?), Selene the mermaid, and Mirage the shapeshifting cat lady, but many episodes focus on macho men showing off their macho strength on macho adventures. It's interesting how Disney put so little effort in promoting the show to boys through their promos and merchandise. Though Jasmine was often missing in action, you won't find a single episode that lacks everyone's favorite blue genie, making it seem as if he was the most important character even though Aladdin's ultimate goal in the movie was to win Jasmine's heart through the Genie. The lack of female characters in the Aladdin series is a reverse example of how the Disney Princess Enchanted Tales series failed due to a lack of male characters. It really says something about how far we've come that the Tangled series added a female sidekick to the cast who appears alongside Rapunzel in virtually every episode. Yet, you won't find Eugene absent from any episodes of that show.

In addition to uneven casting, every episode of Aladdin follows a similar formula that that is inconsistent with the version of Agrabah we were presented with in the movie. In each episode, some sort of mysterious new evil is threatening the lives of everyone in the kingdom, and it's up to Aladdin to stop it with the help of his genie and flying carpet. According to the series, magic is so common in Agrabah that it should have come as no surprise whatsoever to Aladdin when he fell into the Cave of Wonders and found a lamp containing a genie who offered him three wishes. Remember how intimidating Jafar was at the end of the movie when he became a powerful sorcerer and threat to the well-being of everyone in the kingdom at large? Well, apparently, that was no big deal because Agrabah gets threatened by some sorcerer or powerful supernatural being every other Tuesday or so. I know Shahrazad had 1,001 magical tales about Arabian nights, but I didn't think they all happened in the same kingdom at the same time. These regularly recycled storylines are another cause for the show's complete lack of continuity and growth. Add to that the fact that there are no original songs in it, unlike every other Disney series that features a princess, and every episode starts to feel the same.

Aladdin: The Series is a perfect example of too much of a good thing. As much as we would all love to own Jasmine's wardrobe, a magic carpet, and be friends with a genie, eventually all those incredible adventures will start to blend together and feel boring. Unlike Elena of Avalor, which does a great job at building its world's culture, the only consistent thing about Agrabah seems to be that Aladdin saves it on a weekly basis with or without Jasmine by his side. All that, and he still doesn't get a room in the palace.

Back around 2012, a friend of mine sent me a press release about how Disney was making a new princess show about a little girl from a poor village who becomes a princess overnight when her mother marries the king. The endearing image of the little girl on the press release instantly caught my attention with her unique reddish-brown curls, playful expression, and gorgeous lavender dress that was dripping with pearl accents. Something about this description and image got me so excited for the series that I got to work right away on making a grown-up sized cosplay of Sofia's elegant gown. The series premiered on Disney Junior with a TV special called Once Upon a Princess in which Sofia received her legendary Amulet of Avalor and sang about her insecurities for her future life as a princess heroine in the song "Not Ready To Be a Princess." I loved her instantly. Over the next six years, she took me on a four season-long journey filled with Disney Princesses, fairies, mermaid…

The internet has been buzzing about Kingdom Hearts III finally getting a release date after fifteen long years of anticipation. Unless it gets delayed again, we will be able to catch up with Sora, Donald, and Goofy as they travel through the realms of various Disney movies on January 29th, 2019. There have been a couple of trailers dropped over the last few days revealing footage from Frozen, Tangled, Toy Story, Monsters Inc., Hercules, and Pirates of the Caribbean. For me, the biggest announcement came from the latter half of last night's trailer in which Larxene of Organization XIII remarked that Elsa might be one of the new seven pure hearts that they needed for their latest quest. Anyone who has played the first game knows that this is a reference to the Princesses of Heart, a select group of Disney Princesses who had their chance to become video game royalty when they got captured by Maleficent in an attempt to use their pure hearts to open the Door to Darkness. My biggest pe…

We all had lots of fun playing with princess dolls as kids and brushing their hair until it became ratty and tangled. For those of us who are older, there has is the option of purchasing pricier collectible dolls that are made with finer details in their hair and clothes and come with their own stands for display purposes. While princesses have never exactly been lacking in options for collectible dolls, the Disney Princess Designer Collection that was revealed at the D23 Expo in 2011 was the start of something special. Each princess had her own designer dress that looked like it came straight off a modern-day runway. The collection was released alongside lithographs, cards, mugs, and other paraphernalia featuring beautiful matching artwork. The dolls themselves weren't sculpted from your typical Barbie mold. They had fully articulated wrist and elbow joints, salon quality hair that stayed perfectly in place, bigger painted eyes, and long realistic eyelashes that you could actuall…

In 2008, the Philippines released a mermaid princess telenovela that was based on a popular graphic novel by Mars Ravelo in 1952. Dyesebel is loosely based on the story of "The Little Mermaid" with a few distinct differences. It was Dyesebel's mother, Queen Lucia, who first fell in love with a human and left the underwater world of Sirenea to be with him, sacrificing her memories of her life as a mermaid in the process. Dyesebel was born on land, but because of her tail, her mother returned her to the sea, entrusting her to her best friend, Banak, to raise her. Her human father, Tino, was murdered by humans who believed that mermaids were bad luck. Unaware of the circumstances of her birth, Dyesebel grew up curious about the human world until one day, she fell in love with a human and was doomed to follow in her mother's footsteps. The 2008 adaptation of Dyesebel is performed in the native Filipino language, Tagalog, but I was able to watch it with English subtitles …

If you're one of the five people on Earth who still hasn't seen the new Wreck-It Ralph 2 trailer that dropped this morning, I'm here to break it down for you. The trailer featured roughly the first half of a scene in which all of the living voice actresses for the Disney Princesses reprised their roles as Vanellope snuck into their secret internet headquarters that was presented at the D23 Expo last year. A screenshot released last week previewed the scene with Ariel missing, but now we see that she was just off-screen combing her hair with her favorite dinglehopper in a blinged out version of pink tea dress along with lots more animation of other the princesses in their oddly disproportionate new CGI style animation. Let's take a look.

For starters, it's a bit odd how Ariel and Cinderella have swapped the levels of bling on their ballgowns. In the 1950 animated movie, Cinderella's dress appeared to have made from a lightweight silvery-white fabric emblazoned w…

The internet went a little crazy when Entertainment Weekly released Disney's first promo photos of the fully costumed actors from their upcoming Aladdin remake last week. Many were disappointed with what they saw, which unfortunately tends to be the case for live-action remakes. For instance, Aladdin's signature purple vest was changed to red, making it closer to the Broadway version of the show. He was also given a relatively nice shirt underneath, which is more than a little confusing for those of us who remember how poor he was in the original film. Will Smith as the Genie looked a little too much like a normal human instead of a mystical blue entity, but apparently that's still coming. Princess fans were most excited to see previews of Jasmine's wardrobe. In terms of quantity, the internet did not disappoint. We now have images of three of Jasmine's looks that will be featured in the movie as well as a peek at her new handmaiden.

In my "Little Mermaid" origins post, I mentioned that there were three live-action movies in the works based on the beloved Hans Christian Andersen tale. Since then, a few announcements have been made about all three of these movies. One of them has a theatrical release date, and it's sooner than you might think. The circus-themed indie movie that's had a trailer out for several years now is coming to select AMC theaters on August 17th. That's in two months! I wish I could be more excited about it, but the plot looks a lot closer to the 2006 tongue-in-cheek teen mermaid movie Aquamarine than the fairy tale that it's named after. The trailer focuses on how a little girl's belief in mermaids has the potential to save the aquatic heroine who is held captive in a tank at a carnival. I've been feeling indifferent about this adaptation ever since the first trailer was released, but it's nice to know that I will have the option to see it on the big scree…

Sofia the First, everyone's favorite princess-in-training, has met every official Disney Princess that existed when her show began with the sole exception of Pocahontas. The power of her purple amulet granted her the ability to summon famous princesses whenever she was in trouble. Technically, she never met Anna either, but the episode "Olaf and the Tale of Miss Nettle" implied that she was supposed to meet her but got Olaf instead because her amulet was on the fritz. About a year ago, her amulet turned pink and granted her new powers. It now sends her to help princesses, meaning that the chances of her meeting Pocahontas at this point are virtually nonexistent. Why did they acknowledge every other princess movie except this one? Actually, they did acknowledge the 1995 animated classic in an episode of Sofia, but it was very subtle.

In the 2015 episode of Sofia the First, "The Secret Library," Sofia discovers a hidden passageway beneath her castle where a boat …